by Alan Rossi
Upside down in the car, not wanting to move again but knowing he had to move, he suddenly felt this vacillation between not wanting and having to as a principle of existential import: if he didn’t do this thing he didn’t want to do – move his arm – he wouldn’t live. Trapped in the car, he suddenly saw a strange convergence of what he deemed the two competing sides of himself: he wanted to live, but he didn’t want to experience any pain. This, it suddenly seemed, this being trapped in the car, sweating and cold, his own blood occasionally falling on his face, this moment felt symbolic, as though his life itself was metaphorical, the convergence of a story, as though there was some abstraction behind the reality he was experiencing, but that the abstraction was just reality itself, no abstraction at all, that wanting and avoiding were not two separate things, that death and life were not two separate things, that he would die. He felt confused and fought against this thought with the suddenly urgent need to get out of the car and he pulled hard on the steering wheel, so that his neck lifted momentarily off the carpeted ceiling, and he took a breath and tried to extract himself like extracting a deeply embedded thorn from a toe, from the seat. He felt hot pain in his left arm, which pulled and wrenched him back in place, making him yell in pain. He stopped and sat and felt sweat running down his face and his body breathing. Something in him telling himself to breathe, keep breathing, calm down, and after a few minutes, his breathing steadied, though there was still a searing pain in his arm. That was so stupid, why’d you do that, he thought. Now he’d have to wait again until the pain subsided and try to get out slowly, you moron, do it in steps. Another rumble of thunder through the ground and up through his body. Another moment of thinking of the last conversation with April. The thunder moved through the ground, the vibration holding him momentarily. He told himself to breathe and watched another rivulet of rainwater stream by his face, watching the rivulet grow larger, waiting for it to get big enough again so that he could take another drink, and through breathing he told himself to rest, to let his eyes close, he was so tired, to think of something else, to not reduce his entire relationship with April to one argument, to think of the good moments, cooking dinner with her, talking with her, hiking with her, being Jack’s parents together with her, think of something else, he inwardly related to himself, which caused him to remember the days that he and April used to smoke lots of marijuana when they were both in grad school and then sit around and self-analyze in order to figure out things about themselves and their relationship. He opened his eyes as though what was there might not be there, as though he might only be in bed, but he wasn’t, and he remembered how they’d have these discussions, very stoned, as though they were holding each other up for the other to look at, and they knew it was a kind of indulgence, a privilege to have the job that gave them the money that allowed for the time for them to do this, not to mention to have been educated in a way that allowed them to do this, but Nicholas remembered that at least they were doing it, maybe that analysis was better than no analysis at all, maybe, though privileged, they were using their privilege to at least attempt to better themselves, they asked each other. Was that what they were doing? They agreed that they felt they were sculpting their lives into the shapes they wanted, the figures they wished to be, and that it was their view of it that was important, and Nicholas accepted that. He could feel them somehow becoming intertwined, as though their minds in these discussions became one mind, as though they were two cells on a slide under a microscope that bump each other, for a moment separate, and then slip inside one another, a whole new existence, two and not at the same time, a new life. And yet he’d never, no matter how aware he was, and no matter how aware April was, neither had been able to end this feeling that there was division in them, between them, and now, Nicholas thought, what did any of that feeling of connection matter if he was going to pass out of existence here alone? And then the immediate competing and contradictory thought that all that he had just thought had only been possible because of April, because of Jack: they were inside him, they were him. He felt he could let himself fall into this thought, this feeling, a warm dark – he was moving toward it, it enveloping him, it was happening slowly, gently, moving toward it, it moving toward him – and then he opened his eyes. No, he thought. He couldn’t do that. Don’t fall asleep. He opened his eyes wide, and wondered how much time had passed. He blinked hard several times, waking himself, telling himself to wake up, to stay awake.
In the periphery of his vision he saw what at first was only a flash of shadow moving quickly, he thought at first a person, but he heard wings and a small noise, and he knew it was a bird. Out the passenger-side window where April’s profile should’ve been, shifting his head ever so slightly, he saw, on the road, directly in the middle of the road, what appeared to be a hawk. He closed his eyes and opened them and looked and saw the bird was not a hawk, but an owl. He saw the animal in profile, its round head, wings like hunched shoulders, claws on the ground, all visible in the moonlight. The owl stood and slowly rotated its head with its hooked beak and large eyes like a cat’s. It looked into the car at him. The owl’s entire body turned, though its head stayed facing him, and it seemed to lean over and stretch forward, to see him. He didn’t know if this was real, or if he was dreaming, and the owl’s head seemed to move in response, as though it was confused by his thoughts, and then his eyes and the owl’s aligned and he felt a rushing toward the animal and it moving toward him, though the same space separated them, as though the animal’s eyes were pulling him out of the car and himself, and for a moment he seemed to see his own face, the eyes with which he watched the owl the same eyes with which the owl watched him. Then the owl lifted its wings and flew to a branch of a tree, its body completely in silhouette against the moonlit sky. He couldn’t tell if it was still watching him or not, or what it was doing here, or why it had landed on the road and looked at him. It was now a two-dimensional figure on a tree branch, completely quiet, and its silence reminded him of his own failed attempt, of the cultivated quiet and isolation in his family’s life that he hoped would allow him to see clearly what he was trying to do. To change the narrative of his thoughts, to see through the seeming validity of his personal fiction. But he hadn’t changed anything, he thought.
Nicholas closed his eyes in an effort to stop the pulsing in his head and his continuing thoughts, which he both wanted to stop and wanted to keep having, because what if these were his last thoughts? He opened his eyes again and saw that it was nearing five in the morning. What if this cold air here was his last breath? What if this heartbeat, this view out the frame of the car into the forest was the last thing he would see, the last sound the sound of the gentle rain? He wanted to keep seeing and experiencing and thinking, he wanted to apologize to April and feel her body pressed to his, he wanted to pick Jack up from his bed and carry him into the kitchen and share a bowl of organic Sunny-Os, he wanted to bite his lip and be annoyed while eating too fast, he wanted to pop a perfect whitehead on his chin, he wanted to take a piss or crap in the morning, he wanted to have a fever and feel himself changed after it, he wanted to hold Jack’s hand crossing the street or surprise April with a kiss, he wanted to fight with her, manipulate her, feel her manipulating him, feel bad for manipulating her, attempt to be sincere, feel her wanting to be sincere, apologize, begin again, he wanted to keep being alive no matter if he was confused or clear or selfish or mean or kind or dumb. He just wanted to keep doing it, he just wanted to keep being himself and wanted the pain to stop. He didn’t want to think of freeing his stuck left arm. Being stuck in the car, shivering with cold, no longer sweating, he felt an enormous force in him explaining that in every moment he was deeply divided between what he wanted and what he didn’t, as though what he’d always thought about himself was being confirmed now, as he was dying, that yes, he was a deeply divided person, and now that he was not going to live anymore, he was going to experience that divide on the most physical and painful level: he didn’t want to
die, yet he was. The pressure in his head that had been increasing for some time, both from being hungover and from being upside down, and from, he thought now, the loss of blood, began to make him see spots of flashing white, as though the material world was de-pixelating, coming apart. He again had an urgent need to pee and felt himself clench down there and it hurt. At the same time, again the thought arose to move his arm, to do whatever he had to do, he’d moved his legs, it was just this last thing. He was so tired, he told himself, and then something in him told him it didn’t matter if he was tired, he had to free the arm. The drips of blood that had been hitting his face and cheek and nose at what felt like random intervals were now hitting him more frequently. He tasted his own blood again, though he couldn’t tell if this came from dripping down his face into his mouth or came from inside him, and that made him afraid. It was time to try the arm, he told himself. He told himself it was time to free the arm, over and over in order to make the action one he was prepared for. What he knew would be pure pain. The rivulet of water running through the car still wasn’t close enough, and in complete exhaustion, he thought he needed to move his arm, get his left arm free, and when he pulled it now he felt a wave of pain, and he stopped again, feeling the effort was futile, watching the rivulet of rainwater become larger and larger, until it was so close that he could drink it, lap it up finally, a great reprieve. He drank the water with his tongue and sort of sucked at the rivulet moving by, coughing occasionally due to the dryness of his throat. The water in his mouth was momentarily just the water in his mouth and everything in him was this drinking. He drank and drank, the water tasting of dirt, but it was lovely and clean somehow. He tried to push his face into it even though he was very cold and shivering. He wanted the blood off of his face. No, he thought. You want to free your arm. You’re getting tired. You have to do it now.
He observed that the pain in his arm had lessened, he was breathing steadily, he’d rested for a while, the pressure of the blood in his head because he’d been flipped over for so long now was constantly intensifying. He pulled with his upper body, pulling his left shoulder forward and seemed to be able to feel a string of pain along his arm and into his neck, but it wasn’t unbearable. His left arm, which was behind him a little, jammed in place by the door, he pulled forward gently, and when the arm didn’t move, he pulled more forcefully, then he jolted forward, in frustration, and he heard a horrific cracking sound, then a bell-like ringing of hot energy that quickly morphed into excruciating pain, and he said aloud fuck fuck fuck, jesus. He tried to focus on his breathing, but couldn’t: shallow and halting and quick breaths, which his heart followed. There was no sweat on his brow now, his mouth was dry even though he’d just had water, his eyes felt sunken in his face, and the ringing pulse in his left arm made it feel as though the arm was inflated and large, made of shattered ice. After a few long moments, it settled, his body quieted its shivering. And while the pain was still intense and the arm still stuck, he thought the arm was looser, not quite as stuck, and he told himself good, maybe he’d broken it, but it was looser, he could get it out, and he breathed and inwardly related to himself to calm down and try again and just wait a little and then try again. He tried to regulate the pain through his breathing. Then, in attempting to re-shift his upper body in order to reach his left leg, he moved his left arm and a ringing pain moved up his spine, causing a lightheadedness, his vision flashing white, like a camera’s flash right in his face, and then the world slowly resolved again. Stop, he told himself. Don’t pass out now. You can’t pass out now. He breathed, breathed in again, as deep as he could, little points of pain firing all around his body with the deeper breaths. He breathed in again, slowly, and tried to let it move through him and then out of him, then breathed in again. He moved his head against the ceiling of the car. He didn’t experience the same sharp pain in his neck, and he felt a brief reprieve, being able to move his head, adjusting his neck and right arm, and though the pressure of the blood in his head made him dizzy, it felt so nice to roll his head like this even against his own sticky blood. For a moment, just from being able to move his neck he thought that he’d be okay, that there wasn’t something seriously wrong with his neck, it was just sore from being in the same position – and in this lack of pain, the momentary feeling that he wouldn’t die here, he’d get out, he’d talk to April again, he’d get another chance. He moved his head again, kind of rolling it against the ceiling of the car in order to stretch his neck, feeling sticky blood pull away from his face and hair when he moved from the ceiling, and then stopped, breathing heavier, resting. The dim thought that it was just the leg now, just that that had to be completely freed from under the dash.
More rainwater passed by his face, and he drank for a few minutes and stared thoughtlessly, exhaustedly into the dark forest, which was now in a heavy fog. It made him think that morning was approaching, the world beginning again. Maybe April was near town, but that thought was stupid, he knew. She wasn’t walking anywhere, and the last conversation they’d had was one in which they’d argued. He stopped drinking and closed his eyes hard and opened them and the urge to pee became too strong and he allowed himself to pee and felt it warm running down his stomach and chest and down his neck and he turned his head so that only a little got on his chin and face. The warmth was momentarily comforting. It made him sleepier and he told himself to rest for a minute, just a few minutes, and as he closed his eyes he again reconstructed the scenario, standing in the kitchen with Nora Evans, her talking to him, him talking to her, and eventually a strange space opening that allowed him to recognize this Nora Evans person as a person, in which he’d felt clarify in him the simple intention to go find April, which was what he had done, telling Nora Evans that it was nice talking to her. He remembered after the party driving home in the car with April, thinking that he’d wanted to convey all this to her. That he’d come to find her, and what had allowed that to occur was the confusion of his selfish wanting to flirt or be near this other person, that the dispersal of the wanting awakened the actuality of this other feeling, which was not a feeling, but a self, another story: not wanting April, but just being with her, just being there. But to be able to explain that properly, he remembered thinking, he’d have to admit the sexual attraction first, which had led him to this other feeling, this other intention, this clearer recognition of the others around him and himself, and he didn’t want to have to do that because he knew it’d both hurt April and make her angry and cause an argument. Though they’d eventually argued anyway, in the car, the argument he’d wanted to avoid somehow manifesting itself, and the most painful part of the argument was that the clear intention he’d thought he’d found in the kitchen was once again lost, was once again dispersed in his feeling that April’s implied accusation was unfair, unjust, mean-spirited, and that he didn’t want to be doing this, and in feeling that he didn’t want to be doing this fight with April, he felt clearly he was against April and her fighting, fighting her, trying to wrestle through words to his own rightness and to the end of the argument, and he had then thought, hands on the wheel, that the only thing he really knew now with any certainty was that he didn’t want to be doing what they were doing, which was arguing, he only wanted to stop arguing, though he also felt he wasn’t wrong, there was nothing wrong with his actions at the party, so he kept arguing with her, explaining to her that she was simplifying the situation in a way that was frustrating, and that she’d be frustrated by it too if she really thought about it. Then he remembered, at the sort of climax of the fight, that she’d said that she was upset not because of the flirting and not only because Nora Evans was using April as part of her flirtation method, but because Nora Evans had said something about Nicholas bringing the family off the grid, and he hadn’t corrected her. In fact, he’d gone along with it. When the whole thing was my idea, she had said. It was my suggestion to get you out of that job you hated. My suggestion to move some place quieter, slower. My suggestion to get out of the cit
y. I know you remember that I told you that maybe you needed a place where you could see what you were doing again, I know you remember that, but what I remember thinking was that I was getting sick of you bitching about how everything was wrong, the fast pace was wrong, driving in cars was wrong, TV, social media, publishing, your job, and I framed it like that, move to some place quieter because I was sick of hearing you complain. That’s not fair, Nicholas had said. You were just as annoyed with the traffic, the commute, the loss of our time getting to some place we didn’t want to be, don’t give me bullshit about how you did it because all I do is complain, to which Nicholas imagined her saying in his memory that of course she wanted something different, too, but that, see, what he wasn’t understanding even now was that she had to frame it in this particular way, she had to frame it like maybe doing this would help his work, would help him do what he was always saying he needed to do, live in the present, and you took that and ran with it, but really I just wanted you to stop complaining about everything, and now you’re talking to this Nora Evans woman like you dreamed up another way of life for me and Jack. Such bullshit. Nicholas thought of how he’d shaken his head, saying that it’d just been easier, he was just moving the conversation on, and to please think about it, and April had said, Oh, I’m thinking about it, she’d said. And what I think is you’re a selfish asshole. She had gone quiet on the ride home but in the continued conversation in his mind, she said, What I think is that you’re a selfish asshole, and what I think is you’ve always done this shit, why would it be any different now? You always eliminate Jack and me. You always say, I live in the mountains of North Carolina. I live off the grid. I took my family off the grid. But you wouldn’t have done any of that had I not shown you the books and the websites and introduced you to some people to help us do it. It was my idea and you make it seem like you grew a beard, put on a flannel, grabbed an axe, and created the entirety of our life by hewing thatch huts for us to live in. Nicholas imagined himself saying that that was all maybe true but that he really wasn’t even trying to do that, he wasn’t trying to eliminate her and Jack, it was just easier in conversation to talk in this way, and he knew that April would say that that was exactly her point, it was easier to talk about him, it was easier to make everything about him, it wasn’t malicious, she realized, she wasn’t saying he was evil, she was calling him an asshole, and that’s what an asshole was, a person who made everything about himself, and that was exactly what he did, she thought maybe Jack arriving would change it, and to some degree it had, but after Jack grew up some, Nicholas was back to being the way he’d always been, which was self-concerned with his own self-improvement or investigation or whatever he was calling it these days, his project, she guessed that’s what he was calling it now, his project, and it left her and Jack out, except when it was convenient for Nicholas.